Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment, as examples. Semiconductor devices are typically fabricated by sequentially depositing insulating or dielectric layers, conductive layers, and semiconductive layers of material over a semiconductor substrate, and patterning the various material layers using lithography to form circuit components and elements thereon.
Capacitors are elements that are used extensively in semiconductor devices for storing an electrical charge. Capacitors essentially comprise two conductive plates separated by an insulating material. Capacitors are used in applications such as electronic filters, analog-to-digital converters, memory devices, control applications, and many other types of semiconductor device applications.
The semiconductor industry continues to improve the integration density of various electronic components (e.g., transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors, etc.) by continual reductions in minimum feature size, which allow more components to be integrated into a given area. As feature sizes of semiconductor devices are diminished, the manufacturing processes for capacitors and other components can become more challenging.
Corresponding numerals and symbols in the different figures generally refer to corresponding parts unless otherwise indicated. The figures are drawn to clearly illustrate the relevant aspects of the embodiments and are not necessarily drawn to scale.